


A Beginning of Sorts

by Lost_Robin



Series: Opposite Sides of the World [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chuck Hansen is a Brat, Gen, Stacker is done with everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-25 22:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18172121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_Robin/pseuds/Lost_Robin
Summary: September 30th, 2014: the (unofficial) founding of what will become the PPDC.The world is falling apart. All Anna wants is to not leave the only place she's ever really known and move across the world to Hong Kong.





	A Beginning of Sorts

September 30th, 2014

 

Anna Gottlieb was barely eleven when her entire world changed. Up until then, she had spent almost her entire life with living with her Uncle Hermann in Berlin, where he taught computer science, physics, and mathematics at a university. Before that, she had lived with her grandmother in Cambridge.

 

She never asked after her parents. One was dead and the other never spoke to her unless necessary, despite living in the same city as her. Sometimes, she liked to pretend that Hermann was her father, despite the fact that he had been thirteen when she was born. It was impractical, but he was a much better guardian. He never once forgot her birthday, though that might have been because hers was the day after his birthday.

 

As it was, she liked her life in Berlin. They visited her grandmother and uncle in London every summer, and she enjoyed her online classes. They spent their weekends exploring the city, taking in every museum Berlin had to offer. But then the Kaiju came and her uncle explained that they would be moving halfway across the world, to a city called Hong Kong. A faraway place where her uncle would be spending all of his time writing code.

 

The other child was the son of a future Jaeger pilot, whatever that was. Anna knew that her grandfather was involved in this somehow, but when he and Uncle Hermann had spoken, they switched to German and spoke very quickly and angrily. Anna was trilingual, technically, but her German had never been as good as her French and English, despite having lived in Berlin since she was six.

 

Anna’s grandmother, who had divorced her grandfather not long after her Uncle Bastien had been born, joked that their family was tied together by languages. In order to survive a Gottlieb family event, she said, one must speak at least German and, failing that, conversational English, because most of the family could speak English quite well. Her grandmother was English and French and spoke quite quickly in both languages. Anna’s grandmother’s German had never been on the same level as her ex-husband’s.

 

“It will be good for you,  _ liebling _ ,” Hermann said as they packed up their apartment. “You will be able to practice your languages.”

 

“But it’s going to be so far,” Anna said. “Why do we have to leave Berlin? Can’t you just do your programming from here?”

 

“I’m going to be teaching as well, once they set up a school of sorts,” Hermann said, closing the trunk containing his books with a smack of his cane. “It’s going to be a good place for us.”

 

“Can’t I just go to boarding school?”

 

“I thought you wanted a chance to practice your languages.”

 

All of the Gottliebs were brilliant in their own ways. Hermann was an actual genius who had graduated from university at fourteen and had his doctorate before he was seventeen. Bastien, her favorite uncle other than Hermann, was a brilliant artist who, at seventeen, had a gallery tour. Anna had always been good at languages, but in the Gottlieb family, that wasn’t exactly a special talent.

 

“Isn’t most everyone else going to be American?” she said. “I speak English fluently.”

 

English was, after all, her first language. She didn’t speak it much outside of their apartment in Berlin, but most of her schooling was in English.

 

“Good thing not everyone else is going to be American, then, isn’t it?” Hermann argued. “You’ll be fine,  _ liebling _ .”

 

“How are you going to homeschool me when you’ll be busy with the coding all day?” Anna argued. “Why not just send me to boarding school?”

 

“It’s a bit late for that. We have a rushed schedule. We’ll talk about boarding school in a few years.”

 

They were still building the Shatterdome when Hermann and Anna arrived. It had been a long flight, the two of them stopping in New York for a few hours to meet with Lars, his father and her grandfather. Anna was given some sweets and told to go play in the lobby while the grown-ups spoke. Her grandfather often forgot that she was eleven, not five. At least the sweets he gave her were good.

 

“Make sure they get all of our trunks in the proper places,” Hermann said. “I’ve a man to meet about a lab.”

 

So Anna waited outside, watching as a bunch of people carried her entire life into the building, which wasn’t much of a building yet. She didn’t even know why they needed such a big place anyway, if they were working with computers.

 

“Miss, should you be here?” a man said.

 

Based on his accent, he was from Australia. Colonel Pentecost had mentioned that one of their Jaeger pilots would be arriving from Sydney. Was she supposed to tell someone when he arrived?

 

Anna nodded. “I’m in charge of distributing the Gottliebs’ luggage,” she said, looking the man over. “May I ask what your business is here?”

 

The man smiled. “I’m one of the pilots,” he said, holding out his hand. “Herc Hansen.”

 

Anna shook his hand. “Anna Gottlieb,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you, Colonel Hansen.”

 

“Shouldn’t you be inside?”

 

“No. I’ve a job to do while Uncle Hermann is speaking to a man about a lab,” she said. She glared at one of the men, who almost dropped the trunk filled with her uncle’s computers. “Pardon me, but please be more careful with that equipment,” she said.

 

The man almost dropped the trunk out of surprise, but straightened up, holding it more carefully.

 

“Thank you,” Anna said. She smiled at Herc. “I think that’s all of them. Are you going to be meeting with Colonel Pentecost?”

 

“Are you a kid or a bloody assistant?” a kid, who Anna hadn’t seen until then, said.

 

He looked very much like Herc, so Anna assumed that he was Herc’s son, the other child on this base.

 

“Chuck!” Herc said. “Be nice.”

 

Chuck rolled his eyes.

 

“I’ve been taught that one should be helpful and that efficacy has never hurt anyone,” Anna said. “You must be the other eleven year old.” Her nose wrinkled. “Lovely.” She looked over at the transport, which was empty of her and Hermann’s things. “I suppose I should find Uncle Hermann.”

 

“Why don’t we come with you?” Herc suggested, giving Chuck a stern look.

 

“Very well,” Anna said, heading for the entrance. “I haven’t the foggiest where anything is here. It’s not very organized yet, seeing as it’s barely a building.”

 

“We’ll just have to find our way around, then,” Herc said.

 

Anna didn’t like the sound of this, not at all. From what she had managed to overhear from her uncle and grandfather’s chat, it sounded like they were building large hunters, but that couldn’t have been right. Lars and Hermann always spoke in German; while Lars spoke many languages, German was his first and best.

 

Hermann ended up being in what seemed to be the main room of the place, at least for now. All that had been built so far were quarters and this room. More would be coming, Stacker assured them, including labs.

 

The quarters weren’t built like the places Anna had lived before. Their apartment in Berlin had been on the ground floor, to make it easier on Hermann. They each had their own room and Hermann had his own office as well, where he worked when he wasn’t at the university. It had been cozy and Anna hadn’t had to put shoes on just to eat breakfast. In fact, shoes were banned from the apartment.

 

This place, the Shatterdome, as Stacker had called it, was very different. Shoes were a necessity outside of personal quarters. Anna didn’t quite get a room like she had in Berlin, which looked out on their little garden. Her quarters here included a bed, a closet, a desk, and her personal effects. The bathroom was down the hall and she had to share it with Hermann, Stacker, Herc, and Chuck.

 

Stacker insisted that the five of them have dinner together that night, to celebrate the beginning of the Jaeger Program.

 

Oh. They hadn’t just been saying hunter. They had named this program, or whatever it was, after the German word for hunter. It must have been her grandfather’s idea, Anna thought. It wasn’t very creative and suited its purpose quite well. He had never been one for creative descriptions.

 

“Why is it called Jaeger?” Anna asked as she pulled on her patent leather shoes.

 

Hermann, who was struggling with his bow tie, took a deep breath. “Because my father wanted something that would be straight to the point,” he said. “And it sounded better in German.”

 

Even when they had been living in Berlin, Hermann and Anna mostly spoke English with each other. It had been Anna’s first language and was the language the two were most comfortable in. When they didn’t want others to listen in on them, they would switch to French or German.

 

“Are you going to hunt down the Kaiju?”

 

“I am going to program the Jaegers so others, like Colonel Pentecost and Colonel Hansen, may hunt the Kaiju.” He finished tying his bow tie. “I’ll take you through the lab once we’ve set up.”

 

Dinner was not going to be in the half-built building. It was in Hong Kong, at a small restaurant Anna was sure Stacker had picked because it was the closest source of food to whatever it was they were still building.

 

Other than her and Chuck, everyone was an adult. Hermann looked to be the next youngest, and he was twenty-four.

 

Anna was used to being the youngest in a room. She had spent the past six years doing her schoolwork in the back of university lecture halls while Hermann taught. He had taken her to faculty dinners when he couldn’t get a babysitter, and Anna had thrived, politely listening to the adults. It was other children she didn’t know how to deal with. So, of course, she and Chuck were shunted off to the side, to sit with their forks and their food, which was the blandest that the adults could order in their limited Cantonese.

 

Anna had been using chopsticks since she was four and just because she was English and German didn’t mean that she couldn’t handle spicy food.

 

“Dad said you’re German,” Chuck, who had never had to deal with being the only kid in a room full of adults, said, pushing his rice around on his plate.

 

“And English,” Anna said.

 

“Then why’d you live in Berlin?”

 

“Uncle Hermann was a professor at Humboldt.”

 

Chuck stared at his plate in silence for a few minutes.

 

“Your mum dead too?” he asked.

 

Anna nodded. “Plane crash not long after I was born,” she said.

 

“My mum died a couple weeks ago.” Chuck half-heartedly stabbed a piece of beef with his fork. “We lived in Sydney.”

 

Oh. She must have died in the Kaiju attack.

 

There was more silence. At the adults’ table, a bottle of champagne was opened. Anna had read once that it was possible to open a bottle of champagne with a sword. Stacker, however, just opened it the normal way.

 

“Do you think they’re going to send us to school here?” Chuck asked after a few minutes.

 

“Uncle Hermann said I’m going to continue homeschooling,” Anna said. “But I don’t know how we’re going to manage that when he’ll be so busy.”

 

Hermann had set up her homeschooling, setting up her online classes through the prep school he had graduated from at the ripe old age of twelve. It was a school meant for gifted students, so it certainly wasn’t slow-paced.

 

“You were homeschooled?”

 

Anna nodded. “There was an… altercation at the university kindergarten,” she said carefully, remembering how Hermann had explained it to Lars and Dietrich. “And Uncle Hermann decided that it worked best with his schedule if I didn’t attend a formal school.”

 

It also allowed Hermann to set the pace for Anna’s schooling. She had online classes for whatever he couldn’t teach, but he taught her math and science. She was already working on algebra, and there was no chance she could get into another fight.

 

“So you just sit around and do schoolwork all day?” Chuck asked.

 

“I also had piano lessons,” she argued. “And some other activities that Uncle Hermann deemed suitable.”

 

She hadn’t really enjoyed her piano lessons. Her teacher had been a strict older woman who took all the fun out of playing. Anna enjoyed playing the piano, how it was math in a different way, but she didn’t want to grow up to be a famous concert pianist. She just wanted to learn how to play Beethoven.

 

Chuck scoffed. “You even sound like a little professor,” he said.

 

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked. “There’s nothing wrong with sounding like one knows what one is talking about.”

 

“You’re eleven, but you sound older than my old man.”

 

“ _ Some _ of us aren’t uncultured.”

 

“Who are you calling uncultured?”

 

“The boy who can’t even use chopsticks. We’re going to be in Hong Kong for the foreseeable future; how are you going to manage if there aren’t any forks?”

 

Chuck stood up. “At least I’m not a stuck-up bookworm,” he growled.

 

Anna stood up, though she was at least two inches shorter than Chuck. “You don’t even read, do you?” she asked.

 

“I do too.”

 

“Picture books don’t count.”

 

At the adults’ table, there was a pleasant discussion about what they could do in Hong Kong while they were waiting for the building to be finished. It stopped when they heard angry German howling and Australian cussing. Hermann turned around to see his niece wrestling with the only other child affiliated with the Jaeger Program.

 

“What is going on here?” Stacker asked.

 

Chuck tried to detangle himself, but Anna kicked him in the shin, causing him to hop in pain. He swore and went to wrestle her.

 

Hermann thudded his cane on the tiled floor, causing Anna to jump away from Chuck.

 

“Would someone like to explain what just happened?” Stacker asked.

 

“He called me a stuck-up bookworm, sir,” Anna said, clasping her hands behind her back.

 

“She said I was uncultured,” Chuck said quickly, shooting a nasty glare at Anna.

 

“So you decided to get into a fight in a restaurant?” Stacker asked.

 

Anna and Chuck looked at their shoes, cheeks heating up.

 

“I expect better from you in the future,” Stacker said. “Now apologize.”

“Sorry,” Anna muttered.

 

“Sorry,” Chuck said in an equally quiet tone.

 

The look Hermann gave Anna when she looked up told her that this discussion was  _ far _ from over. Chuck received a similar, though scarier, look from Herc.

 

Dinner ended shortly afterwards, and Hermann spent the ten-minute walk back to the building lecturing Anna in quick, quiet German. He only reverted to German when he was furious. He continued lecturing until they were in the quarters hallway.

 

“You will be working on translations in the morning,” Hermann said, standing in front of his door. “And we will discuss your schooling once you’ve finished.”

 

“Yes, Uncle,” Anna said.

 

It was then that she learned that her quarters were across from Chuck’s. Just a mere six feet between the two.

 

Herc and Hermann looked at their kids, then at each other.

 

“So,” Herc said, pretending that Anna and Chuck hadn’t gotten into a fight not even half an hour before. “What are you doing for schooling?”

 

“Anna is continuing her homeschooling,” Hermann said. “I could show you where she takes her online courses.”

 

“Thanks. Is it through the German school system?”

 

Hermann shook his head. “English,” he said. “We thought it best.”

 

Herc nodded. “Similar to Australian, then,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much of a change at all.”

 

Anna and Chuck were staring at each other, silently willing the other to make the first move, as Herc and Hermann made awkward small talk. They didn’t say a word to each other, just going into their quarters when Hermann and Herc told them to go to bed.

 

Hermann’s lab, as Hermann and Anna found out the next day, wasn’t equipped to have Anna sit in the corner, doing her schoolwork. It was small, cramped, and filled with computers and technicians. Another space would have to be found, but Hermann didn’t want her off on her own all day.

 

“Is there any chance we could have a classroom of sorts?” Hermann asked at lunch.

 

To their dismay, the dining hall still wasn’t finished and wouldn’t be finished for at least another few weeks. The residents of their base would have to get meals elsewhere until a kitchen staff was hired, which was why Hermann, Stacker, Herc, Chuck, and Anna were sitting in a noodle shop.

 

“That is out of my control,” Stacker said. “The building was designed by your father, Dr. Gottlieb.”

 

Hermann swallowed. He hadn’t told Lars that he was planning on keeping Anna with him in Hong Kong. While Hermann had sole custody of Anna and had gotten it when he turned eighteen and got a job in Berlin, Lars always wanted to make sure she was being raised how he wanted her to be raised. Lars would have shipped her off to boarding school the second he received orders to Hong Kong. Actually, had Lars had custody of Anna, he would have made sure that she was at the all-girls’ boarding school not even an hour from the Gottlieb house in Germany as soon as she was old enough to board.

 

“I’m sure Father is very busy with the Jaegers,” he said stiffly.

 

Not that Lars actually did anything with the Jaegers now that the UN had picked him to run the bureaucratic side of the new organization that was being formed. He and Jasper, an old grad school friend, had designed the Jaegers together, Jasper engineering the great machines and Lars programming them.

 

“We’ll probably need a daycare eventually,” Herc said. “Even if it’s just a room for the kids to stay out of the way.”

 

Hermann nodded. “I’ll… see what I can do,” he said, looking dejectedly at his noodles.

 

Chuck and Anna, who were seated at the counter so they could watch the noodles being made, hadn’t said a word. They were too enthralled by the noodle-making.

 

“There isn’t much they can get into yet,” Herc said. “No Jaegers are even close to finished.”

 

The next morning, Hermann got up early to call his father.

 

“I’m sorry,” his assistant said. “You just missed him. Mr. Gottlieb is on a plane to Hong Kong.”

 

Hermann sighed. “Thank you,” he said, hanging up.

 

It would take his father about nineteen hours to fly from New York to Hong Kong. That meant that Hermann had less than a day to prepare for his father’s visit. At least he wouldn’t have to prepare a hotel reservation; the only part of the base that was had been finished were the quarters.

 

He had breakfast with Anna in the city, at the same restaurant where she had pulled Chuck Hansen into a headlock.

 

“My father is coming to Hong Kong,” he said.

 

“Lovely,” Anna said, dragging her spoon through her congee. “Do you think he’s bringing us souvenirs?”

 

Anna didn’t often get into moods, but when she did, he was reminded very much of Karla as a young girl. He had never been close to his sister, but she had a flare for the dramatic, something she utilized as a professor.

 

“I want you to be on your best behavior while he’s here,” Hermann said. “No fighting.”

 

Lars had enough power that he could have easily gotten custody of Anna for himself. Hermann wondered some days why he hadn’t done so already.

 

“Yes, Uncle.”

 

Once they had finished breakfast, Hermann had to hurry back to his lab. Anna, left with nothing else to do, sat outside the quarters hallway with her tablet. She had lessons on Cantonese that needed to be done, and it would keep her mind off of the fact that her grandfather was visiting soon.

 

Less than nineteen hours after Hermann found out that his father was invading Hong Kong, a UN helicopter landed just outside of the building. The man who stepped out was older, middle-aged, with graying blonde hair and hawkish eyes. Lars Gottlieb, it seemed, had arrived early.

 

One of the technicians ran to inform Hermann while Lars bossed the others around in harsh, German-accented English.

 

“Not now,” Hermann murmured as he looked over code.

 

Where had he gone wrong? He and Caitlin had been over this. It should have worked this time.

 

“Sir, your father is here,” the technician said.

 

Hermann cursed in German, almost dropping his coffee.

 

“Where is he?” he asked, putting his coffee down and grabbing his cane.

 

He had never been the fastest, but he knew how to hurry. He just hoped he got to Lars before his father found Anna.

 

Luck wasn’t smiling on him, though, because he found Anna and Lars at the same time. At least she hadn’t been fighting with the only other child.

 

“Father,” he said, trying not to sound out of breath.

 

Lars studied his son. “How is the programming coming along?” he asked.

 

“We should be finished with the preliminary programming in a few days, and then we’ll be moving on to the neural programming.”

 

Lars turned his attention back to Anna. “Have you been keeping busy?” he asked.

“I’m learning Cantonese,” Anna said quietly, clutching her tablet behind her back. “It will be useful while we live here.”

 

“You won’t be living here long.”

 

Anna looked up at him in confusion. “But Uncle Hermann said that he has a very important job to do,” she said. “And that he needs to be here to do it.”

 

“And you need to be in school.”

 

So this was his father’s plan. Come take Anna away, probably to that school in Germany, though Lars spent most of his time now in New York. If he were lucky, it would be a boarding school in the States. The plane ride would be shorter.

 

“But I  _ am  _ in school, Grandfather,” Anna said. “I’ve been continuing my studies.”

 

“You need structure, discipline.”

 

Hermann was well aware what his father thought of his parenting style. Unlike his father, he didn’t believe in squashing personality or individuality. Anna would never have to be his show pony, his little prodigy who graduated from university at fourteen. She could focus on what she wanted and be happy.

 

“She’s flying through the curriculum I set up with Kensington,” Hermann interjected.

 

“It’s time you went to proper school,” Lars said, ignoring Hermann. “I’ve arranged for you to start at a school in New York in the autumn.”

 

“I don’t want to move to New York,” Anna said.

 

“That isn’t a suggestion; that is an order.”

 

Anna glared at Lars. “My apologies, Grandfather, but only one person can give me orders like that,” she said flatly. “And you aren’t him.”

 

Then she spun around on her heels and walked off. She didn’t stop until she reached her quarters, inputting the code.

 

“What has you in a mood?” Chuck asked, coming out of his quarters.

 

Despite there only being two children, and one of them very obviously not in the mood, Chuck was holding a football. There was plenty of asphalt for him to kick it around on, even if he did have to play by himself.

 

“I’m running away,” she said curtly.

 

Chuck nodded. “Good luck with that,” he said.

 

“What, you don’t think I could handle that?” Anna asked, spinning around to glare at him.

 

If anyone in that base could handle running away, Chuck was sure it was her.

 

“Sounds like you’ve thought it through.” Chuck shrugged. “Not like you’d listen to me anyway.”

 

Anna just looked at him for a second. “Right,” she said. ‘Well, I better get packing.”

 

“Don’t forget an umbrella. Dad said it rains all the time here.”

 

The one thing she didn’t have yet. Hermann said they would go get some necessities this weekend, when he had a break from working on whatever it was they did here.

 

“One sec,” he said, putting the ball down.

 

Chuck went into his quarters, rummaging through a box. When he came back out, he held out a red umbrella.

 

“Here,” he said.

 

“I couldn’t,” Anna said.

 

“If you’re going to run away, you should do it properly.”

 

She reached out, but stopped just before she grabbed the umbrella.

 

“You play football?” she asked, noticing the ball under his arm for the first time.

 

Chuck nodded. “Since I was six,” he said. “You?”

 

“Not really.” She swallowed. “I didn’t have many friends in Berlin.” She paused, clearing her throat. “Actually, I didn’t have any friends in Berlin.”

 

In Berlin, she had really only ever talked to Hermann on a regular basis. She would sit in the back of his classrooms, doing her schoolwork, and his students would coo over her and think it was so adorable that there was a child sitting in the back. Sometimes, she would even raise her hand and ask a question about whatever it was Hermann was teaching, and Hermann would answer, smiling ever so slightly. But she never really went out and played with other children.

 

“Looks like we’re the only kids here,” Chuck said.

 

Anna nodded.

 

“Want to kick around the ball with me?”

 

Anna looked up, not quite smiling.

 

“I’ve never played before,” she said. “I’ve only ever seen someone play on the telly.”

 

“Then I’ll teach you.”

 

When Hermann found his niece again, after a very long argument with his father, Anna was out on the asphalt with Chuck, kicking around a football. Her blonde hair was loose, having escaped the plait she put her hair in that morning, and she was starting to get a sunburn from running around in the sun. She was smiling and laughing, and Hermann couldn’t ruin that for her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is only the first part of a long AU. I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Thank you to everyone in the Discord who gave me the courage to post this. Hope this lives up to everything!


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